What’s new in Zetadocs Expenses September 2018 update

Restrict permitted users for vehicles

This article describes the new features and other improvements in the September 2018 release of the Zetadocs Expenses service.

Changes in this update

Feature enhancements

Restrict permitted users for vehicles

The system administrator can now specify which users are permitted to use each vehicle type.  This improves usability and reduces the risk of inadvertent mistakes when submitting mileage claims.  It also protects against users claiming at a higher mileage rate than their entitlement.

Preview features

The following enhancements are enabled on selected accounts only.  This allows channel partners and other users to understand the feature and to give feedback on its implementation before general release.  Please contact Equisys if you wish to use any of these preview features.

User groups

User groups are a new feature to help with configuring permissions on systems with larger numbers of users.  The system administrator can create groups, add users to a group, then assign permissions to that group. 

Groups are organized in sets – for example, you might create one set called Departments containing groups Sales, Marketing, Finance, and another set called Region containing groups London, Hull.

Departmental approvers and processors

We have added an option to specify the approvers and processors for each submitter.  For example, the sales manager can be configured as approver only for members of the sales team.  This simplifies the approval process for the submitter, particularly in larger systems with many approvers, and also reduces the risk of reports being submitted to the wrong approver.

This is configured on the user settings screen for each approver or processor.  For each role you can specify a one or more User Groups which allows members of those groups to submit reports to the person.  You can also specify individual users, to cater simply for cases where an individual incurs expenses for another department or manager.

Quality and performance improvements

This update includes general quality and performance improvements, including the following:

Only show fuel expense types for eligible users

On UK systems, company car users who are reimbursed for fuel (rather than mileage) claim this using a special expense type.  We have now improved the client so that these expense types are only visible to users who are permitted to reclaim fuel expenses.  This makes the system simpler for standard users, and reduces the risk of a user choosing the wrong expense type.

Mileage shown to 1 decimal place

The client now shows distances to 1 decimal place.

Increase storage available to mobile app

We have changed the mechanism which the Android and iOS mobile apps use to store expenses and other data for offline use.  This improves performance of the app with large numbers of expenses, and also corrects an issue where the client app was unable to run offline on some devices.

Improve display on iPhone X

We have corrected some display issues on iPhone X phones to improve the look of the app on those devices.

Report submission or approval actions not completed

There was an intermittent issue where after approving or submitting a report, the report did not pass onto the next step of the approval process and required intervention by Equisys to continue.

This issue was corrected in an interim update on August 24, 2018, and all affected reports have now been unblocked.

Zero-rate Sales Tax entries

There was an issue where the admin site blocked you from saving a sales tax rate if the rate field was set to 0%.  This has now been corrected.

Client app unresponsive on startup

The initial release of this update on September 18 introduced an issue which caused the client app to enter a loop on startup, repeatedly displaying a message saying that it was upgrading the local database then restarting the app.  This affected use on Internet Explorer and Edge browsers, for users who had run the app previously.

The initial release of the service was withdrawn to prevent the issue affecting customers.  This issue has now been corrected.

Additional upgrade steps

Zetadocs Expenses Connector for NAV

This release is compatible with older versions of the Zetadocs Expenses Connector and NAV codeunits.

Mobile apps

Installed mobile apps will be updated automatically on mobile devices where this is enabled.